Protection and Resiliency for EMC VFCache with Brocade SANs

Todays announcement from EMC on PCIe flash capabilites from the server is an exciting emerging data center technology, network architects want to continue to provide performance, protection, and resiliency in the storage area network (SAN). The days of having application and storage residing on a single compute node are gone. Returning to a direct attached or local storage architecture does not provide the protection and resiliency required by enterprise customers.

Today it is commonplace for a single compute node to have many virtualized applications, all with different performance, data protection, and resiliency attributes. Certain high-performance workloads that are gated primarily by latency and smaller datasets benefit from having the storage closer to the compute node, to minimize latency and maximize throughput. By combining intelligent software with server-based PCIe Flash technology, EMC’s new VFCache meets that requirement and dramatically improves performance. VFCache Flash takes advantage of breakthrough performance technology while insuring the protection of data—the lifeblood of business operations—making VFCache viable even for mainstream mission-critical applications. The one thing that does not change is that network architects want continuing protection, resiliency, and availability for the ongoing changes within the application, compute, and storage blocks.

Brocade® and EMC® share a strong history of providing efficient, highly resilient solutions to help solve data center challenges. Given this foundation, Brocade and EMC have aligned to deliver a seamless fabric-based solution with EMC VFCache products, which enable transparent connections from compute node to storage, with no impact to applications. This highly reliable solution provides Tier 1 applications, servers, and storage enterprise protection and availability within the storage area network. Brocade Fibre Channel Fabrics offer a proven technology that delivers robust availability, performance, protection, and resiliency—a natural choice for the deployment of EMC VFCache and FASTstorage tiering technology.

The need for shared storage continues to grow with the rollout of server virtualization, as well as new Flash capabilities from EMC. Fabrics have proven to provide higher data availability for business continuance through a resilient network design. Also, Fibre Channel has introduced a set of higher-level services for scaling reliable and highly available fabrics. Fabric routing protocols, policy-based routing, hardware-based trunking, Virtual Fabrics, fabric security, and fault isolation are all built on a foundation of stable transport. New fabric-based application services for storage and server virtualization and data protection are further enhancing the simplification and automation of storage administration. Collectively, Fibre Channel standards and standards-compliant products are optimized to deliver maximum performance and maximum availability of storage data.

Implementing a comprehensive data protection strategy begins with building a firm foundation with the SAN. EMC’s VFCache, with its FASTtechnology, has both the internal and external mechanisms for data redundancy and data integrity within the compute and storage blocks. Data protection is crucial within transactional and big data environments. Brocade and EMC leverage proven technology services for shared storage. Brocade SANs have built-in services such as In-Order-Delivery, reliability, policy-based routing, trunking, and high availability.

Brocade and EMC offer the most widely deployed storage solutions in the world, protecting applications and data in the most demanding customer environments. EMC VFCache and EMC Connectrix products from Brocade have undergone the most stringent E-Lab™ qualification processes and are fully supported by both companies.

Do you think the value of shared storage versus direct attach or localized storage can provide more data protection, availability, resilency and performance for flash based technologies?

Please note: Certain product lines referenced on this website have been acquired by third party buyers and may no longer be supported, offered or sold by Brocade. These product lines include, but are not limited to, the Virtual Router (vRouter), Virtual Application Delivery Controller (vADC), the Virtual Evolved Packet Core (vEPC) and the Software Defined Networking (SDN) Controller. Any mention of these product lines, including associated services and support on this site, as it relates to Brocade should now be considered historical reference only. Ongoing use of such products may be subject to terms and conditions of the buyer.

Some, but not all the content on this site is provided, reviewed, approved or endorsed by Brocade but in any case, is provided solely as a convenience of our customers. All postings and use of the content on this site are subject to the BROCADE WEBSITE USE TERMS AND CONDITIONS. BROCADE ASSUMES NO LIABILITY WHATSOEVER, MAKES NO REPRESENTATION AND DISCLAIMS ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTY, RELATING TO THE CONTENT PROVIDED HEREIN, INCLUDING LIABILITY OR WARRANTIES RELATING TO FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, MERCHANTABILITY, CORRECTNESS, APPROPRIATENESS OR INFRINGEMENT OF ANY PATENT, COPYRIGHT OR OTHER INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHT. NO LICENSE, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, BY ESTOPPEL OR OTHERWISE, TO ANY INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHTS IS GRANTED. THIRD PARTIES USE THIS CONTENT AT THEIR OWN RISK. Content on this site may contain or be subject to specific guidelines or limitation on use. Third parties using this content agree to abide by any limitation or guidelines and to comply with the BROCADE WEBSITE USE TERMS AND CONDITIONS. Brocade may make changes to this content, to specifications, or product design or descriptions at any time, or may remove content at its sole discretion without notice.